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COMRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



LYRICS 



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LYRIC S 



BY 



GEORGE V. A. McCLOSKEY 




THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 

440 FOURTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 
M C M XI X 






Copyright, 1919, by 
The Nealb Publishing Company 



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Dedicated 
to 

The Unattainable 

Endless and yet not vain pursuit 
For all attainment is its fruit! 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Dedication 5 

Lincoln at Gettysburg 9 

Lincoln Schools 9 

On Naming a School for Lincoln in the Philippines 10 

April 19th 12 

America World-Power 12 

The "Lusitania's" Dead 13 

Rheims 13 

America's First Shot 14 

To the Americans Who Died in the Armies op France 14 

Britain and the Colonies 15 

England at War 16 

From America to Ireland 16 

The Unnamed Dead 17 

U. S. S. "Maine," 1898— In Memoriam— 1909 ... 17 

U. S. S. "Maine" 1911 Commemoration 18 

The Burial op the U. S. S. "Maine" 18 

U. S. S. "Maine," Raised and Committed to the Seas 19 
U. S. S. "Maine" Commemorative Exercises, Arling- 
ton, N. J 19 

U. S. S. "Maine" Memorial, Arlington, N. J. . . 20 

U. S. S. "Maine" Memorial, Habana 20 

The U. S. S. "Maine" Memorial Monument at New- 
York 21 

The "Titanic" 21 

Memorial Day 22 

Theodore R. Timby 24 

Advance Australia 25 

Venice 25 

Geography 26 

Ocean 26 

The Faeries 27 



PAGE 

Dawn 27 

The Skylark 28 

The World of Dawn 28 

The Day Was All Complete 30 

Sunset, December 18, 1913 30 

In the Changing Sunset 31 

Twilight 31 

Setting Sun and Afterglow 32 

A Thrush at Eve 32 

Night Falling on the City 33 

The Bat 34 

Moonrise 34 

The Stars 35 

Sleep 36 

The Nightingale 36 

Climbed • 38 

Lily and Star 39 

In God's Likeness 39 

Mother and Child 39 

Flower Carts in Town 40 

Spring 40 

April 41 

In Woodland Wanderings 42 

The Storm 42 

Inwood 43 

Autumn 44 

Before the Snows 45 

Winter 45 

A Winter Day 46 

L'Hiver 46 

The Rose 47 

Silence 47 

What Is Poetry? 48 

Poesy 49 

To Poe 49 

Edgar Allan Poe 50 

Shelley 50 

Keats 51 

Wordsworth 51 

Byron 52 



PAGE 

Marlowe 53 

Shakespeare 53 

Dante 54 

Sappho 54 

Arcady 55 

The Present Muse 56 

From Horace, Ode I, Book I 57 

The Youth of Love 59 

Caedmon 59 

Love Once Given And Forever 60 

The Lovers 60 

Thyself the Answer Why I Love 61 

Love at First Sight 61 

Romance 62 

First Love 62 

To One Who Asked, What, Then, Is Love? .... 63 

After The Play 63 

The Bridesmaid 64 

In Thought 64 

Constancy 65 

The Sun of Love 65 

If i 66 

The Proposal 66 

Thy Presence 67 

My New World in Thee 67 

Inspiration 68 

Heart's Ease 68 

Epithalamium 69 

Love Lies Bleeding 73 

Youth 75 

Past — Parted — Perished 76 

Aphrodite . 77 

Persuasion 78 

Reverie 78 

To One Alone 79 

My Lady-Love 80 

Viola 80 

The Avowal 81 

Remembrance of First Love 81 

With Roses 82 



PAGE 

On Remembered Shores 82 

On Free Love 83 

Passion or Devotion 84 

Ariadne Forsaken 84 

The Serenader 85 

L'Enchantement du Cceur 85 

Class op 1902, College of The City op New York . 86 

Alone With Night 87 

In The Wistful Gloaming 88 

The Dreamer 89 

My Picture When Young 90 

Mother Love 91 

Experience 91 

Disillusion 92 

Destined 94 

In Retrospect 95 

A Dead Rose 96 

The Prayer op Orpheus 97 

Dead 98 

At The Tomb 98 

Soundings 99 

When All Is Past 100 



LYRICS 



LINCOLN AT GETTYSBURG 

November 19, 1863 

In him the spirit of his country spake 
Over her dead and in his visioned thought 
Beheld futurity for which they fought, 
Not theirs to look upon hut theirs to make. 
He prophesies whose purposes partake 
God's purpose, dimly and at distance caught, 
And as creation's law in chaos wrought, 
The world to its new order grows awake. 
America has part in every clime 
And she that once bore Lincoln still is young. 
For her he also died : in her he lives. 
His words are yet a clarion to all time 
In freedom 's native speech, our mother tongue, 
And of his spirit to mankind he gives. 

LINCOLN SCHOOLS 

Wherever youth shall gather, set the name 
Of Lincoln, like a banner overhead 
Caught up in battle where the bearer bled 
And ever onward borne, a growing flame ! 

9 



Their eyes, their hearts, they lift, and proud to claim 

In such a memory their part unsaid — 

living inspiration of the dead! — 

Learn manhood, our best knowledge, from his fame. 

So may they breathe his spirit! Quickening breath! 

A nation trusted him the long years through 

As its own genius and took heart again. 

The doubting world was stilled with awe of death 

And knew him for himself — sublimely true, 

American, the whole world's man of men! 



ON NAMING A SCHOOL FOR LINCOLN IN 
THE PHILIPPINES 

Not in the ferment of a single hour 
That brings the sense but not the soul of power 
Do men grow free but with the growth of years, 
The union common sacrifice endears 
And mutual interests, well conceived, befriend 
In just forbearance for a distant end. 
Not by a ruler's grace, however pure, 
Are men made freemen in themselves secure, 
But by the spirit of their life within 
That guerdon of their self-control they win. 
Freedom we sing, and is it but a song? 
'Tis right maintained, not tolerated wrong. 
The despot's free to do whate'er he will, 
Freemen to do the right but not the ill ; 
And hence with law — for justice makes them one — 
Freedom departs, as daylight with the sun. 
Freedom, where truth is spoken and is known, 
Let each man render and not claim alone 
But guard another's right as if his own, 

10 



And seek, in duty to the commonweal, 

A liberty that has no tyrant zeal. 

America from long tradition drew 

A soul expanding as her borders grew, 

And her first utterance she would make true 

And all men free, in equal laws, their own. 

Humanity itself she would enthrone. 

She brings to clustered isles of eastern seas 

This birthright of mankind, her liberties. 

Not all as soon as given to be reft 

By passion, faction and ambition deft, 

But thus with use to grow a part of life 

And deep as nature, deeper than all strife; 

And freedom to her newest realms can bear 

No pledge so quick of understanding there, 

So full of meaning as her Lincoln's name 

That speaks to youth a high, unselfish aim. 

The man whom freedom molded and who gave 

Her aspirations even to the slave ; 

One who could bide his time and know the hour 

To take occasion like a gathered flower ; 

For like a sword within the scabbard, still 

Beneath his patience lay an iron will. 

A man according to the people's heart, 

In whom their common instinct had a part — 

A man whose life renews in men his sense 

Of an all-wise, all-ruling Providence; 

He who wrought nothing for himself has won 

A better fame than conquerors have done — 

This man of universal sympathies 

Whose glory grows with the world's liberties! 



11 



APRIL 19TH 

How the whole nation's thoughts flash like the sun 

Upon the blossoming birthplace of its power — 

For such is freedom, sprung to arms that hour, 

Grown greater with the peace that wars have won. 

There was the stir of sober minds that shun 

All quarrels but for right. Each spring that flowers 

Is rooted in the past, and what was ours? 

One strife from Runnymede to Lexington ! 

Such was the age-long conflict they would end 

Even with their lives' ending, leaving peace 

Which freedom only is, and we increase 

That heritage in sharing it and send 

Their spirit like the spring o'er all the earth, 

And here renew it where it had its birth. 



AMERICA— WORLD-POWER 

Once set apart as by a higher call, 

Draw after thee all nations, as the sun 

The planets, in thy endless course begun, 

Until all peoples rise, all tyrants fall! 

True to the spirit that set free the thrall, — 

And freedom is self-mastery or undone, — 

In one ideal make the whole world one, 

In freedom first, forever and for all! 

Risen in vacant realms by ocean veiled 

Till time was pregnant and in this new earth 

Might bring forth thee and freedom at a birth, 

For all mankind thou art and hast prevailed! 

The world is shaping to thy thought sublime, 

present spirit of all future time ! 

12 



THE "LUSITANIA'S" DEAD 

Half-mast our flag in homage to the dead — 

Our dead in warfare that we do not wage, 

Yet waged against us with all reckless rage. 

Peace differs little but for honor fled. 

Are we, thus mocked, contented to have said 

Our protest nor have taken up the gage? 

Had the least Roman in a bygone age 

Thus perished, think ye Rome had bowed her head ? 

Call it not war: for, fronting steel with steel, 

Altho' with sorrow and with death, war goes 

Stained only with the blood its warriors bleed. 

Mere massacre is this and savage zeal 

To lay the world in ruin. Are all foes, 

If not allies? Then best be foes indeed. 



RHEIMS 

Where France and Clovis were baptized, where Joan, 
The visioned maiden, whom God sent of yore 
Out of Lorraine, whose bounds we now restore, 
Crowns France forever on her ancient throne, 
Here inspiration shaped itself in stone. 
And tho' the shattered fragments fall before 
The backward-driven foe, it grows the more 
Upon the mind, more feelingly is known. 
How high a soul sustains the massive arch! 
Not only France but Christendom is there, 
A greatness bearing witness that God lives 
Who suffers wrong with France. His seasons march : 
The patience which is victory He gives 
And in her mind restores His temple fair. 

13 



AMERICA'S FIRST SHOT 

April 19, 1917 

After long sufferance and supreme endeavor 

For peace on freedom founded, not on might, 

America stands forth for all men's right, 

Casting the scabbard from the sword, to sever 

The monster head of anarch power. Never 

Despot and free can in one world unite, 

For good and evil must by nature fight 

Till justice reign alone and reign forever. 

This first shot — to the mark — an earnest gives, 

A shot far noted like a falling star. 

A ringing echo this, of Lexington! 

The spirit of our revolution lives 

In hearts that vibrate to our march afar 

And moves the world whose cause and ours are one. 



TO THE AMERICANS WHO DIED IN THE 
ARMIES OF FRANCE 

Fallen forgotten in a foreign clime, 
They yielded their young life, its hope, its dream, 
And all its uses for this use supreme, 
For all men's freedom till the end of time. 
Fighting a faithless power, the sum of crime, 
Knights-errant of a wildered age they seem 
And in their spirit let the world redeem 
The future from the past — a deed sublime. 
Their country follows on the path they show. 
Who is so much a slave he does not know 

14 



For what they fought or who is still so blind 
As not to see the despot in the foe? 
For Lafayette, De Grasse and Rochambeau, 
Repay our debt of liberty in kind! 



BRITAIN AND THE COLONIES 

Tho' the foe in measured onrush still cry victory, 
or peace, 

Blood alone we give for ransom when the nations we 
release, 

And the war that he enkindled shall not at his bid- 
ding cease. 

For while men can think of freedom and as long as 

God is Lord, 
We who drew against oppression, we will never 

sheathe the sword 
Till the wrongs of old are righted and the ancient 

right restored. 

We that sowed the isles of ocean with the seed of 

freedom, we 
Who have made earth's tyrants powerless as against 

the mightier sea, 
Shall not falter where our fathers triumphed, worthy 

to be free. 

Not to make a truce with peril but to be secure for- 
ever, 

We, unreconciled with bondage, all the bonds of men 
would sever, 

Battling to the end that henceforth all the world shall 
battle never. 

15 



This we pledge our heroes dead by all that they 

were dying for, 
Who to guard the hearths of England fell afar from 

England's shore, 
Beating down at freedom's threshold all the iron 

front of war. 



ENGLAND AT WAR 

"When good and evil stand forth, face to face, 

In warfare that the Persian deified, 

When on the lifting winds their standards ride, 

Gathering nations stirred from out their place, 

Are not the mighty dead, who still abide 

In work and purpose, roused in thee at length 

With yearning of strong hands for deeds of 

strength ? 
Rise to the height of thy great past! Thy pride 
Is freedom's. 'Tis the greatness of the heart 
That makes the man, the home, the state thou art, 
And tho' thou givest on the battlefield 
To the wide scythe of death thy youth, thy flower, 
Bear up a falling world this epic hour — 
Between the despot and the free thy shield! 



FROM AMERICA TO IRELAND 

By all thy wrongs, the right espouse with lance 
And buckler! By thy hate of Cromwell's name, 
To-day the German Cromwell put to shame! 
Thy heart should be with Belgium and with France, 
With England in the world's deliverance, 

16 



With thy own sons here fallen for thy fame 
Where our America so lately came, 
Where freedom stands at bay and bids advance! 
The cause of God is ours, a last crusade, 
And must we conquer here without thy aid 
Or all men's freedom perish, wanting thee? 
Art with us or against us? Where's thy sword? 
Make common cause not with an overlord 
But with the fellowship of all the free ! 

THE UNNAMED DEAD 

Their nameless dust is mixed with that loved sod. 
Their lives of utmost striving, sealed in God, 
Left their achievement — freedom — not their story: 
One with their country's they have made their glory. 

U. S. S. "MAINE" 

1898— In Memoriam—1909 

Avenged — to be forsaken by thy own, — 
Brave ship, a charnel sunken in the slime 
Where death grew one with glory, how sublime, 
How touching, are thy memories, thine alone! 
Midnight upheaval! the infamy unknown, 
The fame is thine — and ours — revered as time 
Reveres eternity. What song, with rhyme 
Enwreathed, avails? What rites shall yet atone? 
The Maine remember! It was on all lips. 
None dare affront our honor: how shall we 
Neglect it! Late the unburied dead we heed. 
Our honors touch them not, but we have need 
To honor faith and keep it, as new ships 
Among old names of fame bear thine at sea. 

17 



U. S. S. "MAINE" 1911 COMMEMORATION 

How are the men who would have outbraved death 
In open war — entombed where their ship lay — 
How are they held in honor whose last breath 
"Was for their country? How, should fancy say? 
Where is their grave that we may lay a wreath 
Upon it? Who can tell, for shame, how they, 
These many years of glory, lie beneath 
The dark, still waters of a foreign bay! 
A nation rose to freedom from their blood 
In that fair isle that watches over them — 
A jewel fallen from the diadem 
Of empire. There, till now, hath memory stood, 
More poignant by neglect, for thus their fame, 
If once our glory, our reproach became! 



THE BURIAL OF THE U. S. S. "MAINE" 

Lay in the kindly earth the heroic dead 
As in their country's heart to rest at ease. 
Give then the proud wreck to the kindred seas 
That bore her on their bosom — depths too dread 
For profanation. Let it not be said 
We raised her to profane her memories 
And turn to idle show her mysteries, 
Like eyeless sockets of too dear a head. 
Not on the shore, but since she cannot breast 
The thronging waves, beneath them let her rest. 
A part of its vast being, there to blend 
With eldest fancy and the still unknown, 
Entrust her then to ocean as its own, — 
More reverent memory, sublimest end! 

18 



U. S. S. "MAINE" 

Raised and Committed to the Seas 

Thy mighty bulk broken amidships lies 

Like an heroic torso on the spot 

Where perfect once it stood and drew all eyes, 

Marred with time's ravage and man's wrong, forgot. 

Yet from the depths, as from the dead, arise, 

All that remains of thee ! become a tomb, 

All that neglect afforded those we prize 

As own glory, who had shared thy doom ! 

How once all beauty and all strength wast thou, 

Tossing the white surge from that vanished prow, 

Even as death bent o 'er thy deck and sighed ! 

Drawn to the welcome seas in solemn state, 

Sink deep in our remembrance ! Bound thee wait 

Our ships of war, none worthier of our pride ! 



U. S. S. "MAINE" COMMEMORATIVE 
EXERCISES, ARLINGTON, N. J. 

There rest, fated ship ! forever there, 

Deep in the purple dark, where endless seas 

Trumpet thy fame to all the shore it frees, 

And every wind blown from a coast so fair 

Is like the soul of worship in a prayer, 

Where, far below the reach of storm or breeze, 

The ocean clasps thee on its bed of ease, 

Our dearest loss of all its trophies rare ! 

But here remembrance, more sublime than tears, 

Bends o'er the relics of that loss to muse — 

19 



Here when the future from the past takes fire — 
And one by one she bids the passing years 
But learn of her, as each all life renews, 
Heroic deeds heroic deeds inspire! 

U. S. S. "MAINE" MEMORIAL, 
ARLINGTON, N. J. 

Here, like her capstan, set the granite base, 

Hewn from the headlands huge whose name she bore, 

Broken by seas that will return no more 

A relic of the Maine; but this we grace 

With such a setting years shall not deface, 

This shell recovered with her dead and o'er 

The vast of ocean and the reverent shore 

Borne for all time to its proud resting place. 

The victims of deceitful peace, not war, 

Whom liberty avenges, sprung from them, 

As from the blood of heroes evermore! 

Here shall their spirit dwell, while this shall last, 

Wreathing her brow with glory's every gem, — 

Upon the rear of storm a rainbow cast ! 

U. S. S. "MAINE" MEMORIAL, HABANA 

Our glory is to be and to make free. 

The cause of Cuba when we made our own, 

We closed the long wars she had fought alone 

And concord gave, best crown of victory. 

A sun that springs a-sudden from the sea, 

Liberty rises from the waves that moan 

Where the Maine sunk and Spain was overthrown, 

Disburdened of the weight of wars to be. 

20 



As martyrs' relics in an altar, set 

These relics from the Maine where, all but met, 

Cuba looks o'er the ocean to her friend, 

For this memorial by the water's edge 

Shall both commemorate the dead and pledge, 

By all they died for, friendship without end. 

THE U. S. S. "MAINE" MEMORIAL MONU- 
MENT AT NEW YORK 

Sparta upon a wreathed column set 
The names of her three hundred, who of old 
Made victory blush she was not theirs to hold — 
Names that in one, Thermopylse, have met, 
One trumpet-blast of fame, resounding yet. 
So are the heroes of the Maine enrolled, 
Whom death amid the waters would enfold, 
Each name in stone, nor can our hearts forget. 
The kin of each are nearest to their own : 
Nearest to all the land for which they died. 
Part of her deathless life, her noblest pride, 
Their great example never is outgrown. 
Renew, as spring the bloom of seasons fled, 
A nation's memory of the nation's dead! 

THE "TITANIC" 

I 

Turning to scene of doom the pageant show, 
The lurking death is near with wraithy hand 
Lifted from icy seas. The frolic band, 
So summoned, look upon the stars aglow. 
The great ship, like a lost Atlantis, slow 

21 



Engulfed, a mimic world, a sinking land, 
They see revealed, as by a lightning brand, 
The all unfaneied fate to which they go. 
Thank God for this, no sudden dread unmanned 
The perishing, nor all the seas can drown 
The grace of such a death. Heroic stand 
Their cenotaph and worthy their renown 
Who met death simply, like a greeting fair, 
Nor started at its sudden trumpet blare. 

n 

Let sculptured grace and monumental stone 
Still image to all after time the brave 
Devoted dead, who in the whelming wave, 
Where death was honor, claimed it for their own. 
All death is this : the body is outgrown. 
Nobly their spirit showed. In death they gave 
Witness to immortality and save 
The laurel o'er the tender cypress thrown. 
Whether their dear recovered dust shall sleep 
Where the fair sun with flowers strews the ground 
Or all the faery powers but frost are bound, 
Or whether still they journey through the deep, 
One fate, one fame, one shaft by glory crowned 
Be theirs and God one resurrection keep ! 

MEMORIAL DAY 

I 

What fills the living with their spirit, best 

Commemorates the dead. This day of thought 

Is with a nation's recollections fraught, 

And flowers, banners, martial strains attest 

22 



Our soldier dead like guardian spirits rest 

In benediction on a country wrought 

Of many one upon the fields they fought, 

United by their blood as they within her breast! 

Enthroned in peace, in heart forever one, 

Proud mother of heroic sons ! recall 

Their cherished memory whose strife is done, 

For from the heaven of thy flag can fall 

No star of all thy crown — one land to-day, 

The glory and the love of blue and gray! 



II 



l-WlTtiTT'r 



The grave must cover all with silence there, 

But these with glory whom the earth embowers 

As if they fell asleep to lulling showers, 

As if their dreams were in the heavens fair. 

In all the future has their past a share. 

They gave their country, garlanded with flowers 

Sprung from their dust, to see this day of ours, 

This golden fullness of the sunlit air. 

The fallen who have left their names on high 

Let victory inscribe upon her shield 

And concord on the arms now hers to wield ; 

Or if they rest forgotten on the field, 

They are as stars that when the sun is nigh 

Are viewless but no less within the sky. 



Ill 

Upon the graves we strew with flowers, we 
Gather one flower imperishably fair 

That close at heart and fresh in mind we wear, 

23 



The sense of their example, thus to be 
Steadfast as right itself till all else nee. 
Their best memorial is their country, where 
They form the thoughts of generations: there 
They still advance the standard of the free. 
Mindful of them, ourselves we consecrate 
In their pure spirit to the commonweal. 
If not in arms, with no unequal zeal, 
As we inherit, let us guard the state. 
Not by the sword alone our country thrives, 
The near concern of all our thoughts and lives. 



THEODORE R. TIMBY 

{Inventor of the "Monitor's" turrets) 

If ever ship might symbolize the state, 

How well might this, its sole hope! Seeming frail, 

It shows but turrets that revolving hail 

Upon the foe the thunderbolts of fate ! 

While yet the eager, hostile nations wait, 

It turns that giant, clad in coat of mail, 

That made all valor of no more avail 

And opened all the seas, our ports, elate! 

"Whose was the thought that armed us on that day ? 

Thine, and thy land forgot thee! Envious seas 

Drew down the Monitor to their abyss. 

So sank thy merit in oblivion gray. 

Wronged spirit, passing, in that world find ease, 

Whose glory stoops not to the fame of this ! 



24 



ADVANCE AUSTRALIA 

Land of surprise, whose star amid the throng 

Of stars arises and leads on the morn ! 

continental realm where freedom borne 

As in the home land isled herself from wrong! 

Land not of exile bnt of promise ! long 

Link the world-chain of commonwealths in one, 

And, as the starry pathway of the sun 

Begins from thee, send forth thy spirit strong! 

Yet virgin, yet a queen, nor sprung alone 

Of English freedom, blood and law and speech! 

bud upon the rose, a garden grown! 

Advance! with thee the empire, each to each 

Bound the more strongly, solely as thou wilt — 

The only empire freedom ever built! 



VENICE 

Float on the dawn, a sunny cloud, to me, 
Dream-picture framed in sky and waters! How 
Like Venus risen from the wave art thou, 
Enchantress from whose spell we can not flee! 
If widowed of thy power yet more free, 
Restore at dusk to thy discrowned brow 
A glamour from the past, as moonlight now 
Reflected from a day afar from thee ! 
We live in fancy in thy years of pride 
When victory, if winged, still flew home. 
Time lapses. With the pilgrim world abide! 
What thoughts go out to thee across the foam! 
Venice, where nature is the shrine of art, 
Queen of the sea no longer but the heart ! 

25 



GEOGRAPHY 

Sage Sibyl, with adventurous passion proud, 
Beckoning heroes still as when the bold 
Discoverer gave a new world to the old, 
So bear the globe yet not as Atlas bowed 
Beneath it but uplifting every cloud! 
Thy maps, prophetic leaves, alike unfold 
The storied past and futures yet untold, 
A world with knowledge of itself endowed. 
The keys of enterprise are in thy hand 
And at thy touch the gateways open stand. 
Dominion follows thee where riches wait. 
Thy step is swift across the virgin land; 
Thy eye is searching still the olden strand, 
And thy large wisdom makes the nations great. 

OCEAN 

Warder of wonders in thy depth and slime ! 
Calm as the blue above in sunny sheen 
Or against heaven warring, darkly seen, 
Worthy the fabling dread of elder time! 
Binding the tropic and the frozen clime, 
Highway of nations and a shield between! 
changeful countenance and heart serene, 
Whose gifts are life and death ! power sublime ! 
While now the moonlight breakers, plumed with 

foam, 
In surging crash and laughing murmurs comb, 
Hurling thy billows high and ever higher 
As if to rise on earth as on a throne, 
Breathe on the soul enlarged, with thee alone, 
A finer air, rekindling its dead fire! 

26 



THE FAERIES 

What are the faeries but our happier selves 
Made free to dwell with fancy in the flowers 
And roam in merry idleness all hours, 
Puzzling the wit of mortals, sprightly elves! 
Upon a moonlight sward or sandy shelves 
Of ebbing ocean gather all their powers, 
And they are busy in the falling showers 
And laugh about the miser as he delves. 
Child-like yet wise as wizard mage of yore, 
Children of that enchantress first and greatest, 
Of mother nature, in whose guarded lore 
They knew of old what we discover latest, 
Like seers they fathom what none else descries, 
For f aeryland is here if we have eyes ! 

DAWN 

On tiptoe — not to break the sleep of night — 
A star upon thy lifted hand, arise, 
Parting the palpitant, amethystine skies, 
White dawn! whose gaze grows nearer and more 

bright. 
The lake is sapphire from this airy height. 
In murmurous, odorous stir of forest sighs, 
The earth, embraced by bending heavens, lies. 
A faery aspect as of dreams grown light! 
Open-eyed wonder of a life new born ! 
Orient glory, universal now! 
Night comes that day may still be fresh. Serene, 
As if the brilliant day had never seen 
Nor the night hidden wrong, earth lifts her brow 
To thee, tho ' transient here, eternal morn ! 

27 



THE SKYLARK 

The lark is reckless with delight 
As torrents wakened from the snow. 
He sings for joy that dawn is bright; 
He soars to have of heaven his fill: 
And while he sings, I can not go, 
And when he ceases, listen still, 
For, borne so high by heavenly mirth, 
Who can at once descend to earth? 

The lark whose heart upbears his wings, 
Whose joy of life is all he sings, 
A joy so full, so freely given, 
That he is rapt from earth to heaven, 
And filling both with vibrant voice, 
When lost in heaven, bids earth rejoice, 
Yet forms upon the ground his nest, 
Soars from its dream, sinks to its rest. 

So near the fireside is to God 
And heaven presses on the sod. 

THE WORLD OF DAWN 

An outpost of the sun by night, 
A golden disc, the moon grew white 

Against the growing dawn 
Whose single shrinking star became 
A globe, a point of finer flame, 

And at a glance was gone. 
A heaven of sun, fire-opal skies! 
The clouds were streamers of rich dyes; 

Below, a mist was drawn. 
28 



The dew that on the meadow glistened, 
The bird that sang as if God listened, 

Into my soul I took, 
And, one with them, grew young again 
"With more of feeling far than then, 

Far more than I could brook, 
Till from my heart all yearnings wild, 
Defeated and unreconciled, 

All memory I shook. 



I rose upon a mountain height 
To gaze its vision of delight, 

O'er verdant rocks and dun, 
O'er lesser hills and, deep between, 
The silver-threaded vales of green: 

As if on wings I won, 
On the firm turf and yet on high, 
A summit islanded in sky 

"Where all the air is sun. 

Renew me like thy own bright day 
And give me all thy heaven for play, 

sun! that I, like thee, 
May dart my soul abroad in joy 
And all the world without annoy 

May gather into me! 
Eenew me, heaven ! in thy bright truth, 
As in thy own eternal youth, 

And make my heart as free ! 



29 



THE DAY WAS ALL COMPLETE 

Awakening dawn came up the quiet sky 
And down the greening hills till at a glance 
The sun took all. The dryads here might dance 
To their own singing and the rippling sigh 
Of leaves and branches and of waters nigh 
Lapsing from laughter into dreamy trance, 
As a bird's trill to silence. This expanse 
Is all Elysian peace as day goes by. 
Cloud-petaled rose of sunset! cast away, 
Petal by petal, all the hues of day! 
The cloudlet moon, upfloating to her height, 
Is growing golden, while the golden west, 
Its flaming forge, its gleam of arms at rest, 
Fade to wan rose and purple, gray and night ! 

SUNSET, DECEMBER 18, 1913 

I gaze and dream upon the sky 
And bathe my spirit there anew, 
"Where all the stars are lost to view, 
In azure depths that woo the eye. 
Light clouds of brazen orange hue 
Flit o'er the south before the mass 
(Hung like a tapestry on high) 
Of motionless dark cloud and pass 
Like a bird's shadow on the grass, 
And there the setting, hidden sun 
Plays with the clouds in freaks of fun 
Till the bright beaming face of day 
Puts on the veil of evening gray. 



30 



IN THE CHANGING SUNSET 

From pale horizon to the deep mid-sky, 
How azure ! Vermeil vapors, puffs of bloom, 
Purpling with that first shade of coming gloom, 
Upon the lower winds are floating by 
Under the pearly scales of cloud on high 
That, motionless in seeming sweep, illume, 
As with a gesture, all the presence-room 
Of wonder-working power far and nigh. 
Swiftly, tho' eye mark not the pace of change, 
A pallid cloud-bank, for the sun that goes, 
Is veined with garnet fire and now it grows, 
Beyond the darkening cliffs, a molten range. 
changing sky that makes the landscape new ! 
Is the creative act within my view? 



TWILIGHT 

The sheep are trooping to the fold. 
A purpling haze from hill to hill, 
The shadows lengthen, and behold! 
The world is shadow. All is still. 
An elfin spell holds earth and air. 
The wind is quiet as a sigh, 
As tho' with dark and dewy eye, 
The twilight, lightly sweeping by, 
Had sighed for that lost youth of day. 
A star upon her tresses gray 
Shines like a royal jewel there, 



31 



SETTING SUN AND AFTERGLOW 

Clasp like a parting lover, Sun ! 

The fainting earth with touch most tender 

And lay her, canopied with splendor, 

Upon a couch of twilight dun, 

To dream upon thy bright return ! 

So go with looks that linger still 

And never seem to have their fill! 

The peering stars about her burn. 



A THRUSH AT EVE 

A note — a trill — and silence longs 
To hear that voice again and hold 
The sweet remembrance of sweet songs, 
The last renewing all of old. 
heart-compelling song! Delight 
'errunning day and greeting night ! 

Thy rapture caught me on its wings. 
Burst into heaven with song from earth ! 
The spirit of the forest sings, 
Unseen, in tones of laughing mirth, 
Liquid as waters, clearer far, 
Sparkling as they to sun and star! 

thrush! what callest thou so long 
That answered not thy cry before? 
What dream is thine to shape thy song ? 
What yearnings of thy kind ? What more, 
Across the seas and far away, 

Beyond the birth and death of day? 
32 



Nay, but I listened to my thought 
That mingled an accordant strain 
And in herself thy meaning sought. 
Thy joy is whole and mine half pain. 
let me think that I am thou 
And singing as thou singest now! 

In feeling all I am all things, 
And thou art one, as child to man. 
Live ever, heart of youth that sings, 
That sang in me when life began! 
My spirit would not lose, when grown 
A universe, its happiest tone. 



NIGHT FALLING ON THE CITY 

I sail upon the river swelling gray 
In rhythm like a breathing bosom. Day, 
Blushing in the embrace of night, must fly 
Swiftly on sunny wings of peace afar. 
The twilight crowns itself with many a star 
And Dian's silver bow is bent on high. 
Dissolving in a mist the outlines stark, 
The gloaming melts about the city. Mark! 
Lights fringe and stud the waters and grow nigh 
The quenchless stars. A movement never still 
And press of commerce and of pleasure fill 
The ever urgent, eager hours that fly. 
Lights, like a chain of pearls from the rich deep, 
On thronging avenues the night-watch keep : 
The pageantry of life is sweeping by. 
The multitudinous life of ages here 

Is multiplied in moments : far and near 

33 



All seems a desert where the sands are men. 
Yet here the world, as from a tower the sea, 
O'erlook and, less regarded, so more free, 
Retire at will within thyself again. 

THE BAT 

Demon visage, snarling grin, 
Dusky wings of bone and skin, 
Clntching claw, keen teeth and cry 
Wild and weird and shrilling high, 
Fiend complete in miniature ! 
Yet when pale and pensive eve, 
Closing her lack-luster eyes 
On a dream of Paradise, 
Drowses into visioned night, 
Many a nittermouse will leave 
Cavern dim and nook obscure, 
Hollow, haunted oaks, and there 
Tumbling in the misty air, 
Circle ever in slow flight, 
Like a being of delight! 

MOONRISE 

Eve sprinkles the dead day with dew. 
Hesper and fellow stars a few 

Like tapers tend the bier. 
Diffused in sun, celestial light, 
Glamorous beauty now of night, 

Closed in a star, shine clear, 
Sounding the darkness with a ray 
An age upon its lightning way ! 
34 



My spirit springs to its full height. 
The stars of God have sown with light 

His heavens which grow near. 
In splendor I renew my eyes 
And fill with peace a heart of sighs, 

For like a listening ear 
The deep and softly breathing night 
Is full of music, rapt delight. 

At her fair rising like a queen 
Blurring the stars about her seen 

As with a mist of light, 
The golden wondrous moon looks down 
On woodland wild and steepled town, 

Shadowy depths of night, 
And with a cloud her train to bear 
Ascends the heavens she makes fair. 

Softer than down and fresh as dew, 
Slumber! with dream-wand bring anew 

Thy fullness of content, 
Or, waking, let me rest serene 
Upon the beauty of the scene, 

night so heaven-sent ! 
hallowed calm ! to find in thee 
Communion with eternity! 

THE STARS 

The heavens open and let fall their peace. 
healing sense of vastness and repose! 
Unveiled of sun, a new creation glows 
In jeweled raiment as on life's surcease! 
Heaven beyond heaven, still the stars increaser 

35 



A universe of brightness! Darker grows 
This colder star, a mote the sunbeam shows : 
My spirit to the skies let earth release ! 
Unbound am I from confines of the day : 
The wasting world of wrong so fades away, 
If death should touch me, I should have no fear. 
Ye stars that light the ages nor grow old, 
Young as eternity! with ye, behold, 
In an eternal orbit I pass here. 

SLEEP 

tender sleep, the faery nurse of pain, 
Fanciful, all forgetful as thou art, 
Lave in delight the weary limbs and heart! 
take my soul among thy willing train — 
Long on the edge of slumber I have lain — 
And from remembrance, from the towering mart, 
Bear me afar nor in the night depart 
Amid fresh airs and murmurous quiet rain! 
Life and its shadow, sorrow, by the gleam 
Of each day cast, will let us rest a space 
"Where living yet released from life we seem. 
But give us refuge from the world in dream 
And leave upon my brow, from thy embrace, 
The calm of eve, the morning's freshest grace! 

THE NIGHTINGALE 

Why am I sad but that I have been gay? 
I lean out while the twilight, darkly clear, 
Closes the fluttering eyelids of the day. 
But this was wanting: sudden as a cheer, 

36 



A song completing all with rapture, here 
Alone I hearken, as if man not quite 
Lost Paradise but heard it carol near, 
How like an angel dropping with the night, 
Pitying all our grief yet full of his delight! 

The stars that light the heavens on their way, 
The springing stars, companion in a throng 
The hasting shepherd, for the peaks are gray; 
And still thou singest, while the night grows long, 
From thy full heart as if it beat in song ! 
Darkness makes solitude the more intense 
And the rapt hush thy melody more strong. 
Plead with thy precious moments! Soul and sense 
Take ever with more transport after brief suspense! 

I would forego the waiting dawn to hear 
Another and another burst of song. 
How sweet is death if angels to its ear, 
Thus singing, heal the spirit of all wrong! 
"What woodland secret makes thy heart so strong? 
"I sing because I live and live to sing." 
What hast thou that I have not, I who long 
To be to life its seer, to nature king? 
"Love only understands or gives the spirit wing." 

Thou singest: "It is good to live and die!" 
All we had hoped of life let death fulfill. 
As dewdrops gathered by the sun on high 
We pass yet seek, even on the root of ill, 
Happiness more than mortal, all our will. 
What tears are in it! That's mortality. 
Joy sees more deep than sorrow, looking still 
From heaven as the eye, all radiancy, 
Of wisdom throned with God upon eternity! 

37 



voice of darkness gazing on a star, 
As parting life on immortality! 

1 follow, like an echo from afar, 
Thy flight of song, thy trail of ecstasy. 
Song-spirit of all beauty! come on me 

As moonlight on dark waters — rippling light! 

Infinite night enskies, impassions thee, 

Its veil a-tremble with the heavens bright 

That are not farther, nay, but purer than my sight. 

CLIMBED 

Joy in our eyes and the swiftness of joy in our feet, 
We to the widening vision are risen to greet 
Lakes — fallen skies — and distances drawn into cloud, 
Ways that go winding afar with a few or a crowd, 
Mountains in surge beyond surge, in a motionless 

ocean, 
Stilled as if struck by a moment of kindred emotion. 
Nature is fairer that man here has dwelt with her 

long, 
Fairer, yet wild with the heart's own strangeness of 

song. 
There are the pastures below where the great kine 

stood, 
Sunlit meadow and duskier green of the wood, 
Clustering homes, lone tower with banner unfurled. 
Treading the top of the mountain, the peak of the 

world, 
Where to go higher needs wings and the level is sky, 
Earth to the uttermost verge in the flash of an eye, 
We with God in His heaven — for heaven is nigh — 
Look on His work and man's — which is His — from on 

high. 

38 



LILY AND STAR 

All bound — how mightily ! — in one, 
The frailest unregarded flower 
Is served by earth and by the sun 
That rules the heavens in its power. 
At dusk, among the stars I move. 
Minute perfection, vast design, 
Eeveal alike a will divine, 
The hand of might, the heart of love. 



IN GOD'S LIKENESS 

Were there no God, there could not be 

So much of God in man, 
These yearnings of eternity 

Within this mortal span, 
This reaching of the arms of love 
To an ideal far above, 

The power, not our own, apart 
From the world's touch, to bear 

In the frail vessel of the heart 
A virtue passing fair, 

The conscience that with secret awe 

Gives testimony of His law. 

MOTHER AND CHILD 

Happy the child against thy heart to press 
His golden head and, while the swift years flow 
Deepening, but their sheltered ripples know, 
Laughing for fancy in thy fair caress! 

39 



Thy love, tho' more partake, to each no less, 
Clinging about thee may thy children grow 
As violets in the olive's shade, or go, 
Securing and bestowing happiness! 
To thee a life enskied in radiance mild 
The Muses pledge and, bearing roses wild, 
This birth of love and crown of joy acclaim; 
Yet to add honor to an honored name, 
The gift of God's love to your own, fair dame, 
"Who bring to mind our Lady and the Child. 



FLOWER CARTS IN TOWN 

The birds may sing how spring beguiles — 
It must by the embowered brook 
Where they are singing — for the aisles, 
Sky-roofed between the desert piles 
Of masonry, a fairness took, 
Bright with the flowers, far-espied, 
That fill with bloom a countryside 
In the mind's vision as we look. 



SPRING 

The earlier, lengthened light serene 
And life in nature's every vein, 
A veil of mist, a depth of green, 
And wild birds singing after rain, 
Refreshing mildness, clearer sky, 
The starry flowerets, here and there, 
Awaited by their lover's eye — 
The soul of spring is in the air! 

40 



But late the laughing light wind blew 

As fresh as dawn, as chill as dew, 

As off a snow-bank into sun ; 

And now the fuller season fills 

The dell with flowers, the steep with rills, 

The heart with hope of life begun. 

The breeze at once is soft and fresh 
And dances every hour at play. 
How lit with dew the spider's mesh! 
The season seems in holiday. 
In jeweled light and golden air 
The sun is yet a friend from prime 
To vespers and the night is fair, 
For earth renews the youth of time ! 



APRIL 

The rain was gushing from a torrent cloud : 
The world is steeped in sunlight far and nigh, 
And the light clouds that sail the windy sky 
Seem bending to the breezes that have bowed 
The beeches, showering all their drops aloud. 
The firstling flowers that glory in her eye 
Aurora, fragrant-bosomed, from on high 
Might stoop to gather of a field unplowed. 
The sparkling sunbeams in the veil of spray 
Blown from the fountain make a rainbow play. 
The thicket wakens to a sudden trill. 
The scene is shifted by the magic hand, 
The airy touch of April, growing bland, 
And ever changing, ever beauteous still. 

41 



IN WOODLAND WANDERINGS 

It is spring and her voices in laugh-lilt respond 
From the new-leaved twilight to sunlight beyond. 
Bird-voices that hauntingly hover in air 
Or in shadowy flight or in bowers apart! 
Wild songs that in dying can capture the heart 
With the rapture of life, winged soul of all art, 
Till in wonder of blind eyes seeing we start ! 
To the stillness so fleeting an utterance give, 
Yet sweet as a greeting of gladness or prayer 
In a burst of the soul to the lips unaware, 
We shall feel it a relish of beauty to live 
And the heart that has hearkened will echo the cry 
As its own, given back from its dream and its sigh, 
And will feel itself kin with all life and all sense, 
So infusing a spirit, creative, intense! 

THE STORM 

A crescent skiff upon its oars of light, 

The moon is laboring in a sea of cloud. 

'Tis lost with all the stars. The thunder grows, 

Echoed from range to range of mountains dim, 

And pealing rolls away to leave all hushed. 

A moving darkness thickens all the air. 

The stillness bursts into a rush of winds 

That bend the trees, and now a gust of rain 

And now a flood. The gathered clouds, hung low, 

With thunderous boom of their sky-ocean urged, 

Break like a towering billow suddenly, 

And ever and anon the lightning cleaves 

The walled night about me — sinuous flash 

Or a broad flare, as at the birth of light, 

42 



Athwart the world. In my retreat I breathe 
The storm sublime and with a kindred sense 
Laugh with the tempest in its boundless joy. 
It passes and the rifted clouds are borne 
(As by the now untroubled moon I see) 
Onward and blown about with scattered stars, 
As tho' the loosened tresses of the storm, 
So swift its course, streamed after on the wind. 



INWOOD 

There in a semi-cirque of wooded ridge 

Sloping on both sides to the water-gap 

That sunders all from summits still beyond, 

How like a heart between the twinning breasts 

This vale of lofty trees in autumn hues! 

It is a sea of leaves from hill to hill 

And there the breeze that plays upon the height, 

A coolness stirring in the voiceless air, 

Moves not the depth of foliage that has hid 

The turf below it — leaves as bright as flowers, 

So golden that when all the sky is dark 

They seem a burst of sunlight — leaves of flame 

That blaze upon the rocky steep and here 

The massy green below us and above 

And, waxen-glossy, dark as prophecy, 

The leafage of the oak and underfoot 

The russet embers of the summer days. 

A sense of life, of presences unseen, 

Pervades the wild wood where, like wind-borne leaves, 

The birds flit silently and all is still. 

How strange that such a quietude as this, 

Older than its own giant tulip-tree, 

43 



Older than every age and race of men, 
Should neighbor such a hive of city life, 
Closed in one rock-ribbed island girt with tides 
Of the wide ocean heaving far away! 



AUTUMN 

Come with a coronal of leaves of gold 

And pass across the hills in hues of flame, 

In showery skies or azure, while the sun, 

Glowing yet tempered by the depth of air, 

Mellows and seems to fill the melting fruit. 

The lake a mirror misty in thy breath 

And turning wine at sunset, thou art come, 

Burning the dead brush of the summer's bloom, 

To pour a horn of plenty o'er the land. 

With ladies' tresses thy idyllic robes 

Are spangled and with thronging gentians blue, 

Asters of purple rays and golden-rod. 

Bring home the harvest by the moon with song, 

And when the dew is frosty fill the grape 

With a keen sweetness and the nuts let fall. 

The birds are calling to the south in woods 

Fragrant of balsam and bestrewn with leaves 

Flushed with the dying year, and yet a while 

A lingering thrush makes merry, heard but hid. 

Harry the fox from covert, hounds in cry ! 

And track his flight upon the frost of morn! 

In rustling gusts that stir the russet leaves 

The winds are rising, tho' caressing still, 

airy colorist! ere thou must yield 

To winter — nature dying to the root. 

44 



BEFORE THE SNOWS 

The fair creation ruinous and drear, 
Dismantled like a barque of long ago, 
The fringe of ice where shrinking waters flow, 
The withered grasses, speak of winter sere, 
A niggard giver spending others' cheer, 
Too niggard now to wear its royal show 
And its august simplicity of snow, 
The virgin fairness of a new-born year. 
There is a stricken sense in field and wood, 
Yet like a lover, graced with hardihood 
And close companionship, will winter win 
Our spirits from disdain to kindred mood 
Of seasonable change and treasured good, 
Vigor without and meditation in. 



WINTER 

Winter, renewer of the year! to whom 
The hearth-fires smoke amid the undefiled 
Deep meadows of the snow and forests aisled, 
The wan sun peering where the leaves made gloom, 
Mantle with beauty each neglected tomb, 
As when Demeter wandered, pale and wild, 
Over the stricken earth for her fair child 
Hid in the realm of death and yet to bloom! 
Gather, Winter! the dead years to rest, 
The chill of death with resurrection rife 
And dissolution in the veins of life! 
The spring unborn is in the snowy breast 
Of mother earth, the dream of her repose, 
As a love-lyric in the full heart grows! 

45 



A WINTER DAY 

The amber dawn in cloud and misty air 
Grew pearly: her dissolving star descried 
The landscape in white raiment like a bride. 
The storm has left a deep peace everywhere, 
On earth, in heaven. Day is sparkling fair. 
How merry with bells tinkling sweet to ride 
Through the white forest or with glimpses wide, 
The river drifting ice, the mountains bare! 
Some wild birds to a friendly door repair 
And others more aloof yet near abide: 
The warmth of comradeship, the season's pride, 
The grace of home, so winning is and rare. 
Upon the cheeks of youth is winter's rose. 
The twilight darkens and the fireside glows: 
The shaken panes are traceried with frost. 
The pines make music to the North that blows 
And strew the wind with snowflakes as it goes, 
As if with blossoms, for the skies have tossed 
Their white cloud mantle to the earth in snows. 
The streaming moonlight o'er the cloud rack flows 
The winds' wild fluting is in distance lost. 
How like a sprite the owl is shrilling clear, 
Eerily sweet! I lie awake to hear. 



L'HIVER 

La terre contre la froideur 

Se voile dans la neige pure — 

Blanche comme une vaste fleur, 

Belle comme une belle morte. 

Que l'ame soit heureuse et forte! 
46 



C'est la vie en sa profondeur: 
C'est le sommeil de la nature. 
C'est en repos que tout murit. 
Le ruisselet est sous la glace 
Et murmure de place en place, 
Comme en secret le printemps rit. 

THE ROSE 

Bathe in the dew of twilight and the beams 
Of morn! Thy bosomed fragrance overflows 
Upon the winds and like a pure heart glows 
Thy chalice of enchantment and of dreams. 
Silence and love and martyrdom, each gleams 
Within it, all too briefly perfect rose ! 
Young life that from the dust of ages grows 
And beauty's breast and altars fair beseems! 
The butterflies with golden lifted wings 
Poise on thy lips and there the wild bee clings; 
Yet, lavish rose ! are not thy daggers sharp ? 
Love and divine love tho' the poet sings, 
The expectation of ideal things, 
Satire, feared of wrong, can wake the harp ! 

SILENCE 

Mysterious figure ! none her secret spies, 
The treasure locked within her bosom — thought 
Beyond companionship exalted, wrought 
"With passion of great deeds resolved and wise 
With gathered dreams, or grief too deep for sighs. 
Hers are a love unspoken and unsought, 
Fancies too fair and fleeting to be caught, 

47 



The subtle soul that speech would symbolize. 
Smiling in manifold delight and scorn 
Of all delight but hers, tho' sole, complete, 
Perchance one finds her when her mood is sweet. 
Silence! to me be radiant, not forlorn! 
My heart inspire that I may sing to men 
Such thoughts as they recall with thee again! 



WHAT IS POETRY? 

The magic, matchless image-word 
That speaks a spirit inly stirred 
And all will hear as one has heard, 
That has within itself a strain 
Of music that the heart is fain, 
Once having heard, again to hear! 
Beauty in its most feeling power, 
To sense a spiritual light, 
To viewless thought a form as bright, 
The art of nature's happiest hour! 
In their true being show all things 
Yet with a sense of dream that brings 
To all the vision of thy seer — 
heart that sings! 

Only its spirit to its art, 
Its growth and fullness, can attain 
And with the common life began 
This earliest utterance of man 
That must to latest time remain, 
This rhythm of the beating heart 
Of life intense, complete and free, 
48 



This voice of powers within us pent 
That rule the uttermost event, 
This yearning toward a world to be, 
An ordered world of light and thought 
From chaos of dark forces brought, 
The birth for which all life 's in pain 
And not in vain! 

POESY 

Grave and yet radiant, with a sunset light 
Upon thy raiment, all stars on thy brow 
Sublimely lifted into heaven, thou 
Celestial secret visitant whose flight 
And coming are beyond our mortal sprite, 
Impassioned solitary, haunting still 
The springs of deepest feeling, purest will, 
Our maiden love and last secure delight! 
True warder of the Grail ! call into being 
A spiritual world as day on night! 
Foresight is insight: thou art all foreseeing. 
As truth is life if men would live aright, 
So life is beauty where thy voice is heard, 
A staff to sorrow, wand of joy thy word. 

TO POE 

Breathing weird and somber musing o'er world- 
weary souls of men, 

Solitary stranger singing of a clime beyond our ken, 

Seeker after vanished beauty, haunter of forsaken 
meres, 

Prouder — being brave — for ruin, dreamer all thy sad- 
dening years, 

49 



Unto thee this dying incense, deathless lyrist, well is 

due: 
By thy song my spirit conscious of the song within 

her grew. 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 

charmed words of echoing music, hark ! 

When sprites are strong, ethereal fancies gleam 

And grow like stars upon the vacant dark. 

Thy mood we feel, enchanter ! dream by dream — 

Illusive twilight — and about us mark 

A world the dawn reveals not. Wrecked we seem 

Upon a coast of tempest with no spark 

Of friendly fire amid the ocean stream. 

The Muses with their somber laurel crowned 

Thy brow and to rapt sorrow tuned thy lyre, 

Spirit of song, consumed with dream-desire, 

Like memory among her ruins found 

Wandering mad with loss or with calm breath 

Like immortality bending over death! 



SHELLEY 

Dream-spirit, riding on the autumn blast 
Like its own music, who in radiant flight 
Built on the void a rainbow passage bright, 
Whose wonder, all enchanting, grew at last 
Like the rapt lark within the heavens vast, 
Whose Titan fancy, grappling with the night, 
Would shower earth with stars to give it light, 
Perishing in thy youth for Youth thou wast ! 



Adding new tones upon the Muses' lyre, 

Thy visionary passion in its fire 

To its own image would a world recast. 

Thy spirit is like lightning leaping forth 

O'er southern seas from mountains of the north, 

And when a calm is fallen, lo ! 'tis past ! 



KEATS 

Vibrant with every sense of life, like Pan 

Draw from the shade beside the sunlit mere 

The star-eyed nymphs to hearken song that can 

Make sorrow sweet as joy itself appear. 

The pulse of nature and the heart of man, 

In whom she grows to flower, both are here. 

How great a music in how small a span ! 

In longing cease it dies upon the ear. 

All things remember thee who held them dear. 

Thy rest should be among the gods who grew 

From child-like consciousness and there withdrew. 

Thy sleep is immortality, thy death 

Eternal youth, Endymion! and thy breath 

Is in the springing of the youngling year. 



WORDSWORTH 



The voice thou art of mountain mere and crest 
Communing with the sky. In nuptial hour 
Nature brought thee her spiritual dower, 
Her intimate delights and solace blest, 

51 



Still new fulfillment and still endless quest, 
Sense of divinity in her free power — 
The signature of God within the flower — 
The solemn fullness of a heart at rest. 
Upon the dreaming mountain height with thee, 
When night foreshadows all the days to be 
Or when the day is dawning from afar, 
My spirit feels itself immortal, free, 
As of the world divested momently, 
And born to heaven like a forming star! 

II 

seer within the crystal of thy soul 
Of truth eternal — noble hearted thought 
In words so strongly, delicately wrought 
"We live by thy ideas — make men whole 
By thy exceeding manhood! Joy and dole 
Are tools to such a mind. In life, distraught 
As it is lived and loved, thy spirit sought 
A power and a calm of self-control. 
Thine is no vacant day-dream, wayward sigh, 
But such a song as binds the world in rhyme, 
Infinite depth of clearness like the sky 
From which we know the meaning of sublime, 
And overflowing as the sun on high, 
Eternal light and outlook of all time! 



BYRON 

Byron ! how much of life is in thy name ! 
raging heart ! the wounded eagle cries 
On the Olympian lightning of the skies! 
To thy soul-sickness and thy broken frame 

52 



Death brought a crown above thy earlier fame. 
There cast aside, the lute of pleasure lies: 
The trumpet of revolt and challenge dies: 
The dying song like Roland's horn became. 
Upon unworthy darts thy youth had bled. 
An exile's was in fair far lands thy tread. 
The satyr had accompanied in part 
The godlike genius and the godlike head, 
Yet freedom found the hero in thy heart — 
Mother of heroes she ! Her son thou art. 

MARLOWE 

Prodigal son of glory, spent in vain, 

The darling of the Muse, the sport of fate, 

Singing with sense of power in grace, his state 

Like the first star with heaven for its train 

Or last to herald day to land and main, 

Voicing their passion who arise, elate, 

On fortune 's top wave breaking with their weight, 

The melodist that caught the tempest's strain, 

Dead like Leander in untimely storm, 

In wanton daring of his youth at length, 

Pride of excess and bold delight of strength, 

Nearest to us and first of all who form 

The splendid background of our Shakespeare's fame, 

Like dawn he vanished as like dawn he came. 

SHAKESPEARE 

The sounding waters foam by castled trails, 
Bursting the rocks or hasting as in play, 
And now in gentler, fuller flood display 
Their silver mirror to the lingering sails, 

53 



And while the forest savors veering gales, 
Embowered pleasance and stern grandeur stay 
The course of time in never-setting day, 
Mountain with spacious view of all the vales! 
Life uttering itself in thee, inspired, 
In fancy richly various as the elves, 
In vision like the universal soul, 
Creator with thy creature's passion fired, 
Opening hearts to their astonished selves, 
The inward and the outward world unroll ! 

DANTE 

Kindness that should embrace one falling, love 
That should embrace one always, where are they ? 
When peace forsakes him, whither will he stray? 
But Beatrice, remembering him above, 
Her spell about his knightly spirit wove. 
Like hope she led the wanderer on his way. 
As one that sought the Grail and knew no stay, 
Above past glory in his quest he strove. 
An exile from the grave of lost delight, 
The utmost depth of unimagined night, 
The hard ascent where sorrow leans on hope, 
The spheres of vision and the rose he sung, 
Of blessed souls by angels overhung: 
In God his spirit would find rest and scope. 

SAPPHO 

Sappho! how deeply are we moved — 
For still our pulses beat with thine — 
To find a fragment all divine 
Still thrilling from the lips that loved! 
54 



Head tenanted by godlike thought! 
Young heart once vibrant with deep love ! 
Be never brought by time to naught, 
Made one with petty dust thereof! 
Thy heart was lavish of the songs 
Like life forever old and new, 
So golden we are rich in few 
And yet for all our fancy longs, 
As silted ports for treasure ships. 
Live, deathless and forever young, 
In us, wherever love is sung, 
And give thy spirit to our lips ! 



ARCADY 

Goddess, whom death and sorrow may not wrong ! 
Thy drapery molded by the wind's embrace, 
fairest sculptured Muse ! to thy own grace — 
Thy flesh and spirit one, divinely strong — 
Standing as tho' among a maiden throng, 
Apart yet nigh the templed market-place, 
Between the choral odes that leave no trace, 
where is Arcady and where its song? 
By no mad music is thy lyre unstrung, 
Thy motion the delight of thy own thought. 
Thou art not troubled as my soul must be; 
For thou art power in repose, still young, 
In all perfection of the moment caught, 
A moment to itself eternity. 



55 



THE PRESENT MUSE 

Ye poets dead yet never dumb in death, 
For hearts still kindle in your glowing breath, 
Let me dare entrance to your brotherhood, 
As I have part in all man's spirit saith! 

Ye poets! what is fame? A crowned grave. 
Yet to be conqueror, tho' late, is brave, 
Ye whose renown in flow of years hath stood, 
Whose joy an endless joy to all men gave. 

With prescient spirit still the poet bears 
Neglect and, dying, leaves mankind his heirs. 
The daws that sing against the nightingale 
Decry his voice indeed as not like theirs. 

Song by example great and nature try! 
The Muse's footprint, not her presence nigh 
Too many know and age or fashion hail, 
Revering what they must, not knowing why. 

Exquisite minds will know Calliope 
By her own beauty. In my harmony 
Is one string silent? I grow old in art, 
Confident in defeat of victory. 

walk with me amid our western clime, 
Poesy, sweet spirit and sublime, 
That made a Helicon of Homer's heart, 
fresh and fair companion of hoar time! 

56 



As echoing horns at hunting, as a lute 
Heard in the vale from mountain ways and mute 
Again, or stirring as the forest leaves 
Before a storm, and now as seas that bruit 

Its thunderous coming, sobbing, refluent roll, 
Songs broken from some unimagined whole 
Exalt me with a hope, altho' it grieves, 
Strong to express, sweet to sustain the soul ! 

Musing of dawn at dusk, amid the throng 
I pass, alone in heart, yet would not wrong 
With overmuch of self a heart as 'twere 
Vibrant with echoes sweeter than its song 

And deeper than all discords, being won 
From angel-guided spheres of star and sun, 
The dream of poet and philosopher, 
The world's great heart of music, heard of none! 



FROM HORACE, ODE I, BOOK I 

M^cenas, sprung from kings of story, 
Protector mine and cherished glory ! 
Some it delights to have upwhirled 
"With chariots the Olympic dust, 
Whom at each turn the goal, if just 
Avoided by the sparkling wheels, 
And last the noble palm exalt 
As gods, the rulers of the world. 
One the Quirites — fickle crowd — 
Would raise to triple honors feels 
57 



Like joy, another if he stores 

All that is swept from Libyan floors. 

One plows the fields his father plowed 

And never, for a treasure vault 

The wealth of Attalus assembling, 

"Would furrow the Myrtoan seas 

In Cyprian barque, a sailor trembling. 

Behold the merchant dreading now 

The Afric wind that wrestling bears 

On the Icarian billows, how 

He praises peace and tranquil ease, 

His country town, but soon, untaught 

In patience to be poor, repairs 

The shattered barque with riches fraught. 

Another, not above the taking 

Of cups of mellow Massic, breaking 

The solid day, full length is laid 

Under the arbutus in shade 

Or at the softly welling head 

Of hallowed waters. Many vie 

"Where trumpets blow and clarions shrill 

In camps, in wars to mothers dread ! 

Unmindful of his tender spouse, 

The huntsman stays, tho' skies are chill: 

A stag the trusty hounds descry 

Or else the Marsic boar they rouse 

Breaks the well woven nets at will. 

Me the reward of learned brows, 

The ivy, to the gods advances. 

Me the cool grove and tripping dances 

Of nymphs with satyrs far have led, 

Far from the throng, if never shy 

Euterpe with her pipes be fled 
58 



Nor Polyhymnia retards 
Who should attune the lyre and I, 
If you enroll me with the bards, 
Shall touch the stars with lofty head. 



THE YOUTH OF LOVE 

My heart of youth, the ashes of its flame, 

I gather in a little urn of verse, 

And there my former self would I inhearse, 

Kept like the dead from further grief, the same 

Amid all changes, whether I became 

The world's mere cynic or outgrew its curse 

With thoughts that are a better universe, 

Too self-complete to be in need of fame. 

And if, how oft, the youth that held thee dear 

When love was new and who is dead in me 

Seem singing in a tone of long ago, 

Be not affrighted, meeting with him here, 

Tho' he return, a pallid shade, to thee, 

But say within thyself: He loved me so. 



CflEDMON 

C^dmon, unwont to animate the string 
And chant a legend with new fancy dight, 
Stole from the feasting like a shade of night, 
By the yoked oxen his tired limbs to fling. 
He starts to feel his drowsy eyelids sting, 
As with a sudden dawn and dreams in flight. 
Aureoled like the moon, an angel bright, 
Whose look is inspiration, bids him sing! 



So love, with fragrance and a smile of light, 
Awakened me and gave his world-old lyre, 
As tho' to thee by its sweet note I might, 
If not in hope, in fantasy aspire. 
Let but thy love interpret unto mine 
The vision of thy spirit — song divine ! 

LOVE ONCE GIVEN AND FOREVER 

Think not that youth in me and fancy fine 

Each stir of heart for endless love mistake. 

My love unchanging as thy soul I make 

By what I love, immortal and divine. 

Thy thoughts that dwell in heaven grow to mine 

And everything were nothing for thy sake. 

By love, by aspiration, I partake 

The ideality of spirit thine. 

I love thee as the incense loves the fire 

Which must transform it where it would adore, 

All fragrance made, for, like an oriflamme 

Of glory, love, if never hope, is more, 

The inspiration of more high desire, 

By which, if not what I would be, I am ! 

THE LOVERS 

Some love for pleasure and they do love wrong 
To use his name; and some in holiday 
Of spirit, thoughtless and inconstant, play 
At hearts to catch an echo of his song. 
Some drain the wine of passion overstrong 
In reckless heat, and others, vain to say 
What conquests they have won, their fancy stay 
While it is still denied or scarce so long. 

60 



The native spirit of youth, a knightly grace 
Or Bacchic torch must love become at length, 
One with the heart that bears it, pure or base : 
In the weak weakness, in the strong 'tis strength. 
Love varies with the lover: 'tis in me 
Ideal longing realized in thee. 

THYSELF THE ANSWER WHY I LOVE 

A poem thou, the poet God ! Thy heart 

Is like the dawn when first she treads the air 

And solitude becomes a presence where 

Above the night she lifts a starry dart; 

And beautiful as thy own soul thou art, 

Thy spirit sparkling through the flesh as fair 

As light in diamond, more precious there 

As more the splendor it can there impart. 

Radiant form of joy that like the sun 

Rises on darkness vanished, angel face 

Only heaven's language can describe, and grace 

To challenge all comparison and find none ! 

Heaven in thee has made itself a shrine 

And virtue is more lovely, being thine. 

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT 

Say not love ends as sudden as begun, 
As snow dissolves in falling on quick streams, 
As music from the springs of joyance seems 
To ripple from thy fingers and is done. 
Is not the dawn as sudden when the sun 
Looks forth from heaven quietly on dreams? 
Can darkness tarry in his earliest beams, 
Or what should I await, my perfect one? 
61 



Reproach not love it hastens to thy feet 
Nor momentary its true homage hold: 
Unknowingly I loved thee from of old 
And in thy being recognize and greet 
What ere we met I worshiped in my heart, 
All the ideal loveliness thou art. 

ROMANCE 

As tho' I came from forests shadowing o'er 

To look for this first time upon the sea 

And first behold the orbed stars over me, 

As one who has discovered life, and more, 

Its exaltation, all it has in store, 

I saw thy beauty and it haloed thee, 

As 'twere thy spirit's radiance cast on me: 

The vision is not past but goes before. 

Love is a world of faery aspect clear, 

With many a fount of honor to true knight, 

Enchanted realm of fancy, atmosphere 

Of mountain summits, all transforming light, 

Mad hope and mad despair of Paradise, 

Devotion, ideality, sacrifice. 

FIRST LOVE 

If love betray itself, it needs no test. 
By thy own charm, by all thou art — for who 
Would not give thee his heart ? — believe me true. 
For thee I live, for thee would perish blest 
In leaving all of life but love, its best, 
For as the flowers grow by sun and dew 
And both are in thy glance, love early grew, 
A rose to open only on thy breast. 

62 



No veteran of Cupid's wars, I woo 

The very vision that my fancy drew, 

For, loving noble thoughts, I love thee too — 

More than all words, all deeds, all looks can show, 

More than all others can — and would you know 

How great a love I cherish, love me so ! 



TO ONE WHO ASKED, WHAT, THEN, IS 

LOVE? 

Thy heavenly love, how should my heart expect it, 

Claiming no title but of thy own grace — 

Love such as spirits feel who, face to face 

With God, receive His love and who reflect it, 

One on another! Mine — lest thou reject it — 

Must bear itself as in a holy place : 

As sweet devotion which no years efface, 

As thy own spirit in my life, respect it ! 

Love is the homage my ideals render 

To one who is their fair embodiment: 

Love is self-sacrifice that would surrender 

All, even thy sweet self, to thy content; 

And might thy love unite us, love should be 

A visible angel all life's way with me! 



AFTER THE PLAY 

For sportive fancy and the friends we drew, 
Star-clustered on the hillside in bright air, 
But late we played a knightly masque and there, 
As speech to song and words to action grew, 

63 



"We loved in revelry and hazards through. 
I prize remembrance in thy heart, tho' rare 
As a stray wild flower in a garden fair ; 
Bnt for thy love my own was prompter true. 
What fancies come as tears to pensive eyes! 
My spirit, like a dreamer musing o'er 
His vision as he wakens from it, sighs 
So sweetly to have dreamt and dream no more. 
My love that lives upon its own despair 
Contents itself with but itself most fair. 

THE BRIDESMAID 

White-vestured as a sail 'twixt sea and sky, 
The bride, whose train by love is borne along, 
Enters the chapel and the sparkling throng, 
Her sister, my beloved, a bridesmaid nigh. 
Dreamy by turns and fiery as the eye 
Of visioned love, how music, sweet and strong, 
Aspiring, sings with pensive undersong, 
Sweet and aspiring, till it melts on high! 
My heart ! why question whether to the shrine 
My lady-love will come, a bride — not mine — 
Or the wide future for thy dream have scope? 
So one long dying, wondering if he dies, 
Despair and hope each other fretting, sighs 
And follows the departing steps of hope. 

IN THOUGHT 

My heart I ease with music, all its own. 
Impassioned with the slow years' mystery, 
I weave black hours with golden fantasy, 
As prisoners beguile their wall of stone. 

64 



I woo thee in my thought as on a throne 

And sing of one whose heart is shut to me. 

To thy unheeding silence must I he 

A passing lute, without, of plaintive tone? 

I think at random of a thousand things 

And every wandering thought returns to thee, 

The sweetness of each moment idly free; 

And if the subject lend the poet wings, 

I should touch heaven where thy soul had birth, 

Nor would descend but in thy train to earth. 

CONSTANCY 

Shall all the songs of love, unheard of thee, 
Be less the interchange of all we are 
Than like a cry of wreck on reef or bar, 
Lost on the wind and swallowed in the sea? 
Rather as prayer, when heaven seems afar, 
Can bring it to the heart, so let them be, 
And cast a distant ray even to me, 
As all is bright about thee, my soul's star! 
Dream of my life, mine but to dream of, hail 
And not farewell ! thou light by which I sail 
Upon the stormy seas of my own mind! 
For, having once, thou hast forever shined. 
Life's not a failure till its courage fail 
And love's best guerdon in itself I find. 

THE SUN OF LOVE 

Not all in vain is love, still given anew. 
Tho' never I may clasp thee as my bride — 
Joy to the eye, heart 's solace and soul 's guide — 
The fair and fleeting vision I pursue 
65 



As dusk the day, still distant, still in yiew, 
And, bound to thee, with heaven am allied, 
As wandering stars upon their orbit wide 
Look to the sun to whom their light is due. 
As thou wilt never love me and as I 
Will never cease to love thee, so we two, 
Who move apart, have yet a secret tie, 
Thou to thyself and I to thee as true. 
Too lofty to be won, too lovely far 
Not to be wooed, be still my ruling star ! 

IF 

If love assume his hallowed, sovereign seat 

Within thy bosom and my heart on thine 

In tender trust and all delight recline, 

Our thoughts shall be attuned in music meet, 

Like lute and lyre by sweet accord more sweet, 

To raise our spirits as with kindling wine 

And soothe all earthly grief with joy divine : 

Our souls shall in each other dwell complete. 

The hope a springing archway broken seems: 

In vision o'er abysms in air it ends. 

Yet mingling thy perfections and my dreams, 

Love should no less unite us — love that blends 

All aspirations of my life in one, 

As all the stars are gathered in the sun ! 

THE PROPOSAL 

Time has the wings of thought, its weight of care, 
And from delight is flown in an embrace 
But, hand in hand with sorrow, slow must pace, 
Brief to our joy and long to our despair. 

66 



The moment that I look upon thy face, 

As clouds upon the dawn, the world is fair: 

My thoughts go singing all day long in air. 

heavy time that is without that grace ! 

Is joy enfolded in the heart of years 

As fragrance in a bud the sun has kissed? 

Spirit-like radiance breaking through the mist, 

Fan-rays on darkness, stormy hope appears. 

Dear heart that will not hold me dear ! resist 

No longer ! Love crown love that perseveres ! 

THY PRESENCE 

Unwittingly thou hast an aureole, 
A radiance of spirit none withstand, 
And touehest with a wonder-working hand 
The hidden fountains of my thirsting soul. 
As maiden dawn on troubled darkness stole 
Softly, upon the clouds, till all the land 
Sang with the lark at lauds, all ill command, 
All sorrow, with a look, and I am whole. 
The world is bright before thee, for thine eyes 
So brighten all they look on, as the sun 
Still makes the aging earth seem new-begun. 
My life endear to me and all my sighs, 
In quietude of light and open skies, 
Close in thyself whose joy and mine are one! 

MY NEW WORLD IN THEE 

Amid forlorn caresses of the seas 
Clasping and leaving and returning, fast 
My barque was stranded. Ocean from the vast 
Of dawn arises and the keel it frees. 

67 



The sail is filled with such a gallant breeze 
As wafts it to emprise beyond the past, 
As lightly as a cloud, to win at last 
Some Paradise of the Hesperides. 
Into the ocean! There the future lies, 
Unknown, the foaming coast of fantasie, 
Like the new world when those adventurous eyes, 
To claim its perilous promise o'er the sea, 
Fared forth alone, beyond familiar skies — 
Their golden Indies, virgin world and free! 

INSPIRATION 

Not for the world amid its thousand cries 

But for the joy of song with none to hear 

Would I have sung but that I woo thy ear 

And glory to be glorious in thine eyes. 

In song my heart o'erflows and fountain-wise 

Still fills with love and life, commingled cheer ! 

It were enough to live for to be dear 

To one in whom their inspiration lies. 

So love and honor by thy glances grow 

Each seems the flower of the other's stem. 

All that the noble soul can treasure show, 

As jewels brighter for the diadem! 

More fair than in themselves appear in thee 

Beauty and truth — twin eyes of poesy! 

HEART'S EASE 

All sorrows by thy grace are reconciled. 
Sick-chamber windows looking toward the sun 
And where the sky and mountains melt in one 
Empurpled distance, where the faery wild 



Calls fancy, while a subtle fragrance mild 
Breathes with each breath of wind and half in fun 
Bears health in breathing, such for every one 
The thoughts thy beauty brings to grief beguiled. 
When melancholy comes upon my heart 
Like winter falling from the darkened skies, 
My window on eternity thou art 
And heaven looks upon me through thine eyes. 
The sanctuary of my peace I find, 
Angelic beauty and angelic mind! 



EPITHALAMIUM 

(Choral) 

Sun in heaven! shine thy fairest on the joyous, joy- 
ous day, 
A day their hearts will hold more dear 
With each new year 
To cast its roses on their way ! 

Kaptured music ! lift the spirit as on wings of fire and 

levin 
Beyond the sorrow-burdened reach 
Of human speech 
In steep ascent of visioned heaven ! 

(Choral) 

The bride is come to shine as bright , 

On day as Dian on the night 

And where she looks she leaves delight. 
69 



Angels might kiss her face as fair 
As one of them, all unaware, 
For beauty's grace and virtue's beauty 
Unite in her as joy with duty. 

Fair as to night the breaking day, 
Fresh as to toil a holiday 
And fragrant as returning May, 
Like all that youth can dream of love 
And like its star that shines above 
At dusk, at dawn — like all we see 
Of beauty but more beauteous she! 

Crowned with that maiden innocence 
That vice and virtue reverence 
Alike as held of heaven, whence 
Love also came to light the fire 
Of their new hearth and feed it higher, 
How queenly at the altar stood 
Her all ideal womanhood! 

(The Bride at the Casement) 

In each note the bird sings 
Is a flutter of wings, 

And why a song 

So sweet, so strong? 

For a home tho' it be 
But a nest in a tree, 

If love be there, 

Is dear and fair. 
70 



(The Bride) 

I am too happy for words: 

I would but earol as birds 
For joy of being, being thine. 

Never a lark in his heaven. 

Sang, or a nightingale even, 
The helplessness of transport mine. 

We in a moment recover 

All that love gave to each lover 
Since Eve was pressed to Adam's side. 

Born in their Paradise then, 

Love will renew it again : 
On this new plane of life abide ! 

(The Bridegroom) 

Whether that Paradise love share 
Or reach to sacrifice as rare, 
Every path with thee is fair. 
The years have flowered in a day 
Whose joy they cannot take away. 

Thy beauty seems a holy thing, 
The hopes of life embodying, 
All joy that lights and taketh wing : 
Yet do not vanish from my touch, 
For never lover loved so much. 

Eest in my arms as love 's own lyre, 
As in the sky a star on fire. 
Spirit and flesh, thyself entire, 
As I am now possessed thereof, 
With my whole being do I love. 
71 



(The Bridegroom Continues) 

Love that queens thee, maid or wife, 
'Tis the sense that there is truth 
In a world with falsehood rife, 
'Tis the reverie of youth 
Still renewing it through life. 

Taking all its grace of thee, 
Love, thy mirror, drew thine eye 
To reflect thyself in me. 
As the lake gives back the sky, 
All my love grows heavenly. 

(Choral) 

present God and still the same, 
Who takest Love to be Thy name, 
Who formed the heart of this fair bride, 
Make joy their life and love their guide 

From dayspring unto evensong, 
From fall of dusk to dawning sun, 
Until the years — may they be long — 
Of lover and of wife are run! 

So make them one and one with Thee 
And consecrate their love to Thine, 
Changing in springs commingling free 
The water of their lives to wine ! 



72 



LOVE LIES BLEEDING 

Why now arisen from thy pale repose, 

Unquiet ghost of love that with the rose 

Should then have faded and have left no trace 

But the next summer's flowers in its place? 

In my first youth, in my first love — and last — 

I worshiped one to fancy unsurpassed. 

I loved her as a spirit pure and high, 

Sweet as her smile and radiant as her eye. 

I loved her as a skylark loves the sky. 

How destiny, whose other name is chance, 

Dashed 'gainst the goal the chariot of romance ! 

She drew from my delight such glamor rare 

To fall in her regard I could not hear. 

From joy I fell to sadness, overwrought 

For what love only could have missed or sought. 

An exile from her heart and wandering 

In twilight griefs and dim imagining, 

The madness of a broken dream, I strove 

And deeper in the wound the thorn I drove. 

So strongly bound and tenderly, my heart — 

Its life without an object — bled to part. 

She wronged me in her thoughts, herself in mine. 

Peace I recover, but the glow divine? 

I have forgotten how to love as then — 

Obscure the magic scroll I read again. 

I wish her well and farewell, as I leave 

My youth with her and o'er its relics grieve. 

Yet in my heart the old love begs the door. . 

The wrong I suffer and the love I bore 

Divide me still and shall forevermore. 

Not false to me but to herself, her pride 

Disowned the crowning graces I descried. 

73 



So much less nobly of herself she thought 
Than I whose world was in her — all else naught. 
Weaving anew the broken web of life, 
I would bid all my love, to banish strife, 
Farewell, but can not ! most lovely face ! 
The soul alone could give so sweet a grace. 
Thine was the whole charm of my native place. 
Might I behold thee once to touch thy heart, 
Shed tears and kisses on thy hand and part ! 
I can not be as tho' I had not met thee, 
Have suffered too much ever to forget thee. 
My heart, in breaking from thee, broke in twain 
Losing its joy, I cherish all its pain. 
Deceived shall I believe thee or unkind, 
And true or false to that ideal mind, 

maiden mind that taught me how to love 
Yet never learnt, like Dian throned above! 
A tenderness I feel for all thou art, 

The bloom, the desolation of my heart — 
Weary to think if thou or I be wrong, 
Weary to think but we are parted long, 
Most weary of the years between us rolled, 
How happy could I love thee as of old! 
Could I at least forget until the end 
When I shall know thou art again my friend ! 
Alas! if love by which I seemed to live 
Should be no more than this, that I forgive! 
Let me reproach thee not for any wrong 
Nor yet reproach myself I loved too long! 
Let me forgive thee as if we were dead, 
Thou mine forever, all between us fled ! 
When heaven is nearest, be in thought with me ! 

1 love thee still because I have loved thee ! 



74 



YOUTH 

Love filled my heart and empty left it. 

What healing have we here? 
Too winning beauty who bereft it 

Of all that made thee dear! 
What hast thou done with all the heart 
I gave thee ere we thought to part? 

Within the eyes that mirrored mine, 

Within her soul to see 
All that in thought I held divine 

And I aspired to be, 
Too like Narcissus at the last, 
I loved the image that I cast. 

I made her queen of every thought — 

My love must be unique — 
But what in that fair flame I sought 

I have not wings to seek, 
Who loved in her my own creation, 
A being of imagination. 

I won of all the winds their sighing 

Nor could forego so much. 
So great a love is long in dying, 

Tho' wounded at a touch. 
Do I remember, do I dream? 
I lived in fantasy I deem. 

The loss is age, the memory youth. 

The rapture — all I had — 
As if the world and she forsooth 

Were envious I was glad 
Tho' but in fancy, this is taken 
To leave me utterly forsaken. 
75 



Had I less love, love ! for thee 
Or love and thou more ruth, 

Had love won both or not won me, 
I still should be in youth. 

Love's naught unless 'tis everything 

And then must all with love take wing. 

The heart that she could draw so high 

And bear to bring so low 
She never can return that I 

May feel it leap aglow 
But took what none can e'er restore 
For I have heart to love no more. 

If love be not eternal, yet 

The want of it is so — 
This pang of infinite regret, 

This loss of long ago — 
And youth, the flowering of our hearts, 
With hope it comes, with love departs. 



PAST— PARTED— PERISHED 

Love, being past, to us may seem, 
Who waken from it, but a dream, 
Yet one of such a lightsome grace 
That life has nothing in its place. 
once enjoyed, forever lost! 
To love we turn, whate 'er the cost, 
With such a look as Orpheus cast 
Upon Eurydice — the last! 
76 



happy life could I, who sighed 
For all I dared not hope, have died 
While thou wert still my reverie—* 
Too happy death — instead of thee! 
For I was stricken in my bloom, 
Too deeply wounded by disdain, 
And thou art lying in thy tomb, 
Remote as ever from my pain! 

The fleeing nymph whom Pan would follow 
'er windy height and flowery hollow 
Was turned to reeds to echo long 
The haunting tenderness of spring. 
Too dear one ! thou art all I sing 
And all I have of thee is song. 



APHRODITE 

Smiles from lips like Cupid's bow 
Sped his arrow, kindled quite 
By her looks of heavenly light, 
Through my heart at once aglow. 
Other arrows, silent, sly, 
As I laughing bid him rest, 
Cupid all in vain lets fly, 
For my heart is in her breast. 
There, if thou hast power more, 
Throne thyself where I adore! 
Me, unworthy of her bosom, 
Aphrodite! do thou grace 
And of mine her love will blossom, 
E'en as Cupid of thy race, 
77 



Fairest queen of fond desire, 
Drawn by many another dove! 
Mouth of roses and of fire! 
Beauty, mother of young love ! 



PERSUASION 

If she believes, she is half -won. 
Can love be trusted and yet none 
Returned by such a feeling heart ? 
If pity seek to draw the dart, 
Can she its darling peril shun ? 

Not long, if still the seasons run 
And winter warms to see the sun, 
Can she be cold and we apart, 
If she believes. 

May love in gracious thoughts begun 
Weave toils that can not be undone, 
And mine pursue with so much art 
That all her kindred fancies start! 
Our lives are mingled and made one, 
If she believes. 



REVERIE 

Across the dewy vale I mark 
A light within thy tower, 

And now it dies upon the dark 
That holds thy hidden bower. 
78 



that thy angel, where the stream 
Of slumber bears thee, might 

But open thee this heart of dream, 
My soul to thine take flight! 

soul and form of loveliness ! 

Our thoughts of heaven enshrine! 
The kiss thy smiling lips should press 

"Would dwell like song on mine ! — 

An hour of such immortal bliss, 

Were it the last of life, 
Death too were happy in thy kiss 

As if with heaven rife! 

Could I but win thy heart to love 
As high as mine's profound, 

As ocean and the sky above 
Are each the other's bound, 

So we, in our horizon blest, 
From all the world apart, 

Should happy in each other rest 
Forever, heart in heart. 



TO ONE ALONE 

If age shall mar or death defile 

The youthful radiance of thy smile, 

Thy form of chaste and perfect grace, 

Thy happy, happy-making face, 

All in thy spirit shall survive, 

As mine will keep its love alive, 

And I shall see thee with my heart, 

Still imaged there as now thou art. 
79 



MY LADY-LOVE 

What is my lady-love to me? 
All happiness on earth can be, 

All virtue is in heaven. 
Her love is an ideal quest 
And were a whole life's stay and rest — 

Were so much favor given. 

So innocent she seems to bear 
About her still a purer air 

Of Paradise at play — 
So beautiful that any man 
To give her joy, a moment's span, 

Would cast his life away — 

Were she a queen, her grace alone 
Would shed upon the mightiest throne 

Luster it cannot give! 
All hearts are light to hear her sing; 
And as the whole world welcomes spring, 
So greet her, all that live! 



VIOLA 

A flower to glad the gypsy ways, 
Broider the forest, and in mirth 
To bring the purest skies to earth, 
Thy name befits her and thy praise ! 

In dusk retirement from our gaze 
She shone, a star, by golden worth, 
And, coming forth like morning's birth, 
She is the brightness of our days, 
BO 



THE AVOWAL 

In parting now, 

Lest we forever part and thou 

No whit of all divine, let me avow — 

spirit tender 

Yet careless in thy heavenly splendor 

Of all the homage which the world can render ! — 

1 love thee — more 

Than woman e'er was loved before! 
Forgotten, I remember. Hopeless, I adore. 

Till life is done 

My thoughts will hold thee as if won, 
For time may reach his utmost bound but love has 
none! 



REMEMBRANCE OF FIRST LOVE 

She comes across the years to me — 

love so dearly sought! — 
And all my heart grows young to see 

Her youth tho' but in thought. 
She shines upon remembrance bright, 
The spirit of all pure delight. 

By heaven's grace and nature's crowned, 

She lit love's earliest flame, 
For where she passed was hallowed ground 

And joy before her came. 
What others would be thought was she, 
"What others never think to be. 
81 



WITH ROSES 

These roses breathe to thee apart 
The sigh, the whisper of my heart: 

Let beauty's rose 

For me enclose 
A fragrance added by love's art! 

Tho' life have many fruits to shower, 
I vow that love shall be its flower 

And intertwine 

That flower divine, 
All life to bloom as these an hour. 

The light, the dusk of starry eyes, 

The heaven, my heaven, that in them lies ! 

that I might 

Live in their light 
Till death, till all but our love dies ! 



ON REMEMBERED SHORES 

Here where the straining sails seem drifting, 

On the world 's verge their white wings lifting, 

Like birds that are at home at sea, 

Here where the gray surge, day and night, 

In ceaseless and exultant might, 

Towers and breaks with lengthening roar 

In toppling green and foaming white 

And tramples all the endless shore 

To roll from other worlds to me. 

Here we as children took delight. 

No sail of all brings thee again 

82 



To me now wretched, happy then. 
A graceless, loveless world without thee — 
A world of love and grace about thee — 
Such is the difference to my heart 
And such the power that thou art! 
Alone I wander here, alone, 
My grief, thy memory, to me 
More precious than all joy but thee. 
Still present to my thoughts, my own! 
I think of thee as living, seem 
To wait thy coming, and, instead, 
Returns the grief that thou art dead, 
The use of years a broken dream. 
Yet, happy spirit, beaming light 
Attempered sweet to mortal sight, 
The old love in new kindled eyes, 
A love beyond all sorrow wise, 
In vision come as when thy face 
Gave light to ours! How vain a prayer! 
Heaven keeps thee in too close embrace. 
Death were less hard had I too died. 
I would not pluck thy innocence 
Out of its heaven, nor can bear 
To be without thee: take me hence! 
Or lift my thoughts where thine abide ! 

ON FREE LOVE 

Love in the flesh, a thorn, 
All travail and still-born; 
Love in the spirit, a flower, 
A heaven-breathing power; 
One would be free in name, 
One evermore the same. 
83 



Love that is unrequited, 
In its own truth delighted, 
Love that return endears 
And ripens with the years, 
A bond, love is not free, 
The bond of constancy. 

Free love, a slave to sense 
And only free to die, 
Love bound in innocence, 
The freedom of the sky, 
How the false prophets do 
But more attest the true! 

PASSION OR DEVOTION 

One love would all possess — 
The flesh in its caress, 
The heart, the thought no less — 
And one would all bestow — 
A life, a heart aglow — 
"Were it not better so? 

ARIADNE FORSAKEN 

All night I watch for dawn to rise: 
Yet look not, dawn! upon these eyes, 
Too weak with tears to bear thy light ! 
Eise never : I should dwell in night. 
The sea mist brightens at thy name. 
So Theseus shone by my own flame. 
What heritage of fate I bore 
And love unworthily bestowed 
Lays on the heart a double load, 

To be unloved, to love no more! 
84 



The thread of life the fates had spun 
Was in my hand and I was won: 
And couldst thou be so dear to me 
And not be true as thou wast dear? 
But to be false even thou must flee 
And couldst not look upon me here. 



THE SERENADER 

Lady of dreams ! thy balcony of flowers 
Breathes of love only. Let thy heart be free ! 
How shadowed from the moon the while are we! 
Low as from distance, in these hostile bowers, 
My lute scarce sounded. Were these moments 

hours — 
Why coy ? 'Tis nature the pursued should flee. 
Love and my soul are one, so made by thee. 
Higher, pursuing thine, my spirit towers. 
It is for love of thee that I love danger. 
Chance offers and as winged let us be 
While yet we may. This cloak beseems thee best. 
With horses ready and disguises stranger, 
My swordsmen wait us, as musicians drest — 
Their tone rings iron. All is still. With me. 



L'ENCHANTEMENT DU CCEUR 

L'univers etait en fleur, 
L'espoir m'eveillait au jour, 
La nuit me trouvait reveur, 
Lorsque je suivais l'amour. 
85 



II vient seul, inattendu, 
Comme le sens d'un mystere 
Dans les bois du primevere 
Qnand la neige a disparu. 
Mais il part comme les rois, 
Entrainant toute sa cour : 
Nos illusions, sans retour, 
Partent a la meme fois. 
La blessure que l'amour 
Fait en entrant dans un cceur 
Peut se guerir par bonheur; 
Mais celle-ci que tu fais, 
Amour! en partant, jamais! 



CLASS OF 1902, COLLEGE OF THE CITY OF 
NEW YORK 



Hopeful yet half regretful we shall go, 
Armed with the power and the lore won here, 
Into the world with all our hearts aglow, 
Ere the spring buds be honeyless and sere. 
So we must pass and others take our place, 
The long procession from the future's haze, 
Yet Alma Mater, grown in fame and grace, 
Will seem the old love of our earlier days. 
Now all our college hours will soon be past, 
And dearer in remembrance' mellow light, 
Just as the day seems fairest at the last 
And the steep hillside sweetest from the height. 
So in the waning years our youth will seem 

But half a memory and half a dream. 

86 



II 

Spendthrifts of time let us not be, for youth 
Softly goes out of us and leaves us old. 
If not in years, those lives are long in truth 
That most and best of thought and action hold. 
Be among those, or good or ill befall, 
Who have wrought ideals into life and fact, 
Ambitious but ambitious most of all 
To keep their honor clear, their hearts intact. 
So let us strive to live, until life ends, 
That when we meet again in years to be 
And all our hearts grow warm with memory, 
Each will be proud to call the others friends; 
And draw the circle closer when, alas! 
Slow to the silent world beyond we pass. 



ALONE WITH NIGHT 

Gathering stars and so impearled, 

night ! but veil me from the world 

And this from me, 
With springing song I shall take flight 
On wings, new found, of swift delight 

Suddenly free. 
What change is in my being wrought ? 

1 move in space as in my thought. 

So once it was: how tenderly 
In youth, in love's high fantasy, 
On such a night 

I passed a casement deep embowered, 

87 



A garden where the still moon showered 

Shadowy light. 
The house is gone and all would seem 
Vanished but my abiding dream. 

In myriad stars the heavens break, 
All sense to soothe and yet awake, 

But tho' each night 
Bear a new heaven in view of earth 
And a new day it bring to birth, 

New dawn of light, 
The newest holds remembrance fast 
And in the present sums the past. 

Not all estranged, met face to face, 
Beside my perished youth I pace 

The years across. 
What cherished hopes — remembrance vain- 
Mingle their first sweet with the pain 

Of endless loss! 
Lingering longing, fled delight! 
For youth and years make up to-night! 



IN THE WISTFUL GLOAMING 

The child heart swells 
For manhood's power 
Whose fancy dwells 
In childhood's hour, 
And age, in sooth 
Poor by amassing, 
More than things passing 
Kemembers youth. 
88 



Life is so brief 
Would it were song, 
And would that grief 
"Were not as long! 
Were hope all truth 
And life all youth, 
How happy we 
And love should be! 
Wisdom were laughter 
Were we as wise 
Before as after 
Such hope, such sighs! 



THE DREAMER 

Upon a mountain by the shore, 
Where all the winds are free, 

Before the ebon palace door, 
By moonlight glint of sea, 

I stood until the sun grew light, 
Till all the stars went down, 

Till heaven took its mirror bright 
And laid aside its crown. 

The tender tint of dawning sky 

And brilliant sky-blue sea 
I thought to fix in mind and eye 

In steadfast reverie. 

The waves, like clashing cymbals beating, 

How distantly they swirled ! 
The glamor from the world in fleeting 

But closed me from the world, 

89 



For glory, instinct in my blood, 

Grew such a fantasie 
I was content in lofty mood 

To dream and not to be. 



MY PICTURE WHEN YOUNG 

How fond the youth of that stern man 
Who looks upon thee and grows tender, 
Kemembering all the years surrender 
And all remembrance never can! 
bright but early clouded dawn! 
How fair is youth when youth is gone! 
That once we loved and once were young 
Is now an all too poignant thought. 
If gain with loss the years have brought, 
More easily is nature wrought 
To grief than joy so hardly sung. 
How looking forward in our youth 
And looking back in age we sigh, 
As if our happiness in truth 
Were ever elsewhere, never nigh! 
Psyche, my soul, my butterfly! 
If happiness be in our will, 
We will be happy, thou and I. 
Life is for us beginning still. 
The loves of youth are pale and past 
And all its ardor grows remote. 
The songs of youth seem thin at last 
Beside a fuller, richer note. 
Veiled sorrows came, unveiled depart — 
For who is lord of his own heart? 
90 



All things I suffered in the past: 
All leave me conqueror at last. 
As from an evil dream I waken 
"With spirit quiet and unshaken. 
Happiness flees when we pursue, 
But be at rest : it comes to you. 



MOTHER LOVE 

Guardian spirit of our lives, 

How gracious to our latest thought! 

Heavenly rainbow that survives 

All troubles winds and waters wrought, 

The storms of all our life to span, 

A covenant of God and man! 

Consuming care of thankless years 

How oft a mother's love appears! 

How much of sufferance yet a stay 

To stronger steps that go astray, 

heart that waits for one alway! 



EXPERIENCE 

All that we dream of beauty, all of good, 
To meet, to woo, to clasp, 'tis love, 'tis youth, 
"While life is still romance, its promise truth, 
"While we may yet be all that fancy would. 
How once we loved and hoped — ah, that we could! 
We loved the wishes of our heart, forsooth, 
And lose the vision in a world uncouth. 
Our joys are sorrows, being understood. 

91 



Perchance the gain offsets the loss, I muse. 

A ceaseless fountain not of tears but song 

Is opened in my sorrow and I long 

To make my autumn rich in fruit and hues. 

My mind if I enrich, 'tis at the cost 

Of my poor heart, for all its dreams are lost. 



DISILLUSION 



Thy fullness, not thy freshness, life! I feel. 
Out of all courses but the stars' on high 
I drift on seas as boundless as the sky. 
No going back but onward, woe or weal ! 
I wander like the billows without cease, 
I who had dreamt whatever youth may dream, 
What freedom setting forth on ocean stream, 
What daring voyage to what isles of peace! 
Nature my soul but fortune formed my life, 
Unbending fate, unbroken will at strife. 
crushed and empty honeycomb of youth ! 
Dare all, care naught, and joy atone for pain! 
Is pleasure folly? Sorrow yet more vain? 
Has life, if 'tis mischance, no deeper truth? 

II 

No visions, as when youth took up the lyre, 

Commingle with the world but dwell apart, 

If I may find them in my inmost heart, 

And is it past, that age of gold and fire? 

Short while do I but steal in secret home 

92 



To fancy, I an exile, who each day- 
Had dwelt there? Must I tread the trodden way 
No more with blind yet visioned hope to roam ? 
Yonth too had sorrows tho' forgot at last 
As one grown great ennobles all his past. 
But now the sun, the grace of all things, pearled 
With glamor the refulgent mist below, 
Making earth seem a lower heaven : so 
I give to youth what then I gave the world. 

Ill 

The Grail so many followed until spent, 
If one beheld it, was to heaven caught, 
And was that all the blessedness it wrought? 
Within the dawn that to our dream is sent 
Opens a tranquil harbor of content: 
The crown of all our search is to have sought, 
If this has molded all our life and thought 
To lofty purpose and to high intent. 
Illusions are but falling blossoms, grave 
Ideals our true fruitage. Youth would pace 
The path of moonlight on the ocean wave 
And like the lightning search the dark of space. 
Our quest is in ourselves and what can earth 
Add to us more than adding to our worth? 

IV 

All I pursued I find in thought alone. 
Love perished from my heart and ceased to be: 
Its aspiration still survives in me, 
Constant to truth and not to falsehood known. 
Time changes with eternal purpose charged. 

93 



No goal, no limit once ambition found 
Yet in myself, in my content, is crowned : 
So much, the world grew smaller, I enlarged. 
The passion of achievement strong as youth 
Burns clearer now than when the real bore 
The semblance of a hope that is no more, 
For all is false but the ideal truth. 
Let not dissolving visions leave us weak: 
"We must become the ideal that we seek. 



What fragrance lingers of illusive bloom? 

World of ideas, real to my heart, 

The never aging archetypes of art! 

Let me not in myself myself entomb ! 

If in the strength of truth one can be strong, 

I cherish like a flame amid the drift, 

As heir of my dead youth, its parting gift, 

A veiled victory with voice of song! 

All grows to wisdom, as the dusk to dawn 

While earth renews itself, in heaven withdrawn. 

Thou bearest morn upon thy brow, night! 

And the ideal at the golden portal 

Of day among immortals dwells immortal, 

Hearts raised from earth more open to her light! 



DESTINED 

Love like a dark volcanic cleft 
Sunders my youth from me bereft 

Of heart-refreshing springs, 
Of all love was by all it is, 

94 



Of that long sought illusive bliss 

That gave me kindred wings. 
Yet naked as the winter snow 
My dauntless spirit sings aglow. 

How consciously in youth I sought, 
Whether in too laborious thought, 

Too vacant reverie, 
All inspiration, bright and brief, 
Nor knew that this should come as grief 

Whose pangs enkindle me, 
For destiny has formed all things 
To this one end — the poet sings. 

A star that lingers in the morrow, 
The love outlived by love's own sorrow 

That steals me from myself, 
The love that came, all joy and truth, 
In some May morning of my youth, 

And seems a changeling elf, 
All sorrows past, all joy to be, 
All turns at last to song in me. 



IN RETROSPECT 

If life be but a pilgrimage, 
I went my way, a singing page, 
And where hope dared no further go, 
Still went with fancy. Long ago, 
Inebriate with common air, 
When joy was strength and everywhere, 
I sang as all the wild birds sung: 
The world is wide and I am young. 

95 



As sleep upon unwilling eyes, 

The years weigh down the souls of men ; 

And still we dream a dream that flies 

The empty hands of hope again. 

So plastic man and circumstance 

Less plastic mold each other — chance, 

Cause beyond foresight or control, 

The chain of law upon the soul. 

Upon my soul as breath on glass, 

Sorrow and pleasure come and pass 

Above its depth of still desire. 

My heart I once bore higher far 

And deemed the sun my destined star. 

Every feeling seems a lie 

To those who have not felt it. I 

Am left at last with sorrow's lyre 

How much to yearn for, less to vaunt, 

And by the ruddy, rustling fire, 

Of places, faces, fair and pleasant, 

We muse till conscious of the present 

Only from the sense of want. 

As a star radiant from the sky 

Yet dwelling there, I feel, above, 

A spirit bending from on high 

In whom, long since, we joined our love : 

So fair was she and young to die. 



A DEAD ROSE 

Thy dewy freshness, sunny radiance, shed, 
The mute embodied glow of poesy, 
cherished token, breathing tenderly, 
Fragrant of other years and all things fled! 

96 



Abroad on courier winds thy kindred spread 
The fame of their sweet odor, not with thee, 
That of the dearer dead remindest me, 
Of names in granite hewn and no more said. 
The colors that life bore are growing wan: 
The fair and gay that made our youth are gone. 
Their place is empty in our hearts, our breath 
Become a sigh, altho ' the world goes on, 
Flowering, fading. We shall drain anon 
The wine of life to find, at bottom, death. 

THE PRAYER OF ORPHEUS 

A living visitant among the dead 
Fleet-footed fear and winged hope have led 
And I am come, as once Demeter came, 
If thou, wilt hear me by so dear a name, 

Queen that sittest by the King of death! 

And join thy prayer with mine as in one breath. 

But with thy look sustain the faltering strain 

And with a word release me from all pain, 

For as the mother sought, the whole world through, 

So fair a daughter, here espoused, I too 

My vanished bride would seek where both are found, 

Where one must pace alone and one is crowned. 

By all that grief has suffered, grant me this : 

That I may have again those lips to kiss, 

That form to hold in my embraces lone, 

That soul whose looks commingled with my own! 

All life seems dead with hers and everywhere 

1 can but feel she is no longer there. 
Pluto! — for thou art moved for Proserpine — 
I ask not immortality divine — 

Unblest it were without Eurydice — 

97 



Xor ask it for her lest she grieve for me. 
For my brief years of life her being spare 
That we together breathe the lightsome air. 
Together die, together here repair! 
Hearts heavy with the load of death! Shall I 
Voice all your supplication in one cry? 
Give back our dead or presently we die ! 



DEAD 

My heart is sorrow's self, for he is dead 

In whom I had delight. Turn ! hours that are 

Sisters to grief and pace with sun or star, 

Back to the laureled hour that wreathed his head ! 

Only their eyes they turn and they have said. 

Xo solace shall intrude on grief too far 

Or in our thoughts his living image mar. 

Our hearts are full of him : can he be fled ? 

Having no fear of death but much to do 

Death leaves undone forever, how he too, 

Like our own youth aforetime, from us passed! 

All years are his memorials and so bright 

His memory we bear it as our light. 

So let our lives complete his own at last ! 



AT THE TOMB 

Sorrow and hope on either side her tomb, 
One mortal, one immortal, suppliant both, 
How heavenward as ever was its growth, 
Her spirit rises from the narrow room, 

98 



Winged from the chrysalis of earthly gloom, 
As one that smiles at parting, nothing loath! 
Are we then buried more than she? Our troth 
Is kept with heaven, not the stone of doom. 
Remembrance not in fond lament but prayer 
She asked: we mourn with nature, not despair. 
In God have we communion — earth with star — 
And grief would vanish in His radiance fair, 
Could we but see as we believe her there, 
Immortal welcome smiling from afar. 



SOUNDINGS 

How much in life is shallow! Wrecks there are 
That would have breasted bravely the broad deep, 
Swiftly outfooted all the tempest sweep 
Of sea and, richly freighted from afar, 
Have kept a true course like a homing star 
Havened at last beyond the western steep 
Of the sheer sky, but, soft as coming sleep, 
They drifted, darkling, on the fatal bar! 
How the great task can form us to its need ! 
How the light purpose makes us small indeed ! 
Who dares may fail but who dares not has failed. 
Let purpose and not fortune rule thy fate, 
Or finding fortune stronger, be more great, 
As one whose mind has o 'er her reach prevailed ! 



WHEN ALL IS PAST 

If all but G-od is fugitive. 

Should we repine 1 ? 
The rather let us, while we live, 

Make life divine 
That nothing of it then may fade 
When in the dust our dust is laid. 

I care not where men bury me: 

I am not there 
But in my living thoughts shall be 

A song, a prayer, 
And in the soul that let them fall, 
If I have God, I shall have all. 



100 





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